del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. It allows you to keep and share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, etc. It also allows you to discover new things which have been posted by others. Your bookmarks are stored online which allows you to access and store websites from anywhere. It can be browsed by anyone, however, you need to register for an account in order to save bookmarks. To register all that is needed is a username and password. It is a completely free service and you can multiple accounts, I.e. personal and work. The site was created in 2003 by Joshua Schachter as a hobby. In December of 2005, Yahoo! acquired del.icio.us. Although this is a public site, bookmarks can be marked private which are only viewable to you. Bookmarks can be searched by keywords and tags (a one-word descriptor that you assign to a bookmark). Del.icio.us is an open-ended system.

It can be used to:

Conduct research

Create a Wishlist

Podcast

Plan a Vacation

link log

Save recipes in a Cookbook

Collaborate with others through a shared account.

Infrastructure and Technical requirements:

In order to access it all you need is browser and an internet connection like: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Flock.

Suggested ways for effective use instruction and other education applications:

David Muir in “Simply Del.icio.us listed the following educational possibilities:

Web sites for research or projects

Books recommendations

Professional research

List of books you would like to read

Placing web links on your school web page

Students can find resources at home and access them at school and vice versa

Share what you are reading or view what your peers are reading on the web

Web site collections tagged by school topic

Other ideas:

Create a personal dictionary

Network with other educators

Create a school or grade level bookmark account

Collaborate and share bookmarks with colleagues

Send or highlight bookmarks to specific users

Create a special tag just for a class project

Create a list of resources for students that can put on a course website

When previewing the site, I did several researches and found that like all searches the more defined topic the more specific sites are given. For example:

Topic

Items

Other information

Spreadsheets – to teach a lesson on graphing

21

Types of sites: Create a graph; Graph types for kids; graphing with excel;

Use of technology in the classroom

3,385

Various sites which tell how you could use technology and the value of technology

There are limitations and cautions related to all social bookmarking sites. The Educause Learning Initiative article, “7 Things you Should Know about Social Bookmarking” states:

By definition social bookmarking is done by amateurs. There is no oversight as to how resources are organized and tagged. For example, if a user saves a bookmark for a site with information about greyhounds but only tags the site with the term “greyhounds” and not also with “dogs” or perhaps “dog racing,” that resource might never be found by someone looking for information about breeds of dogs. Because social bookmarking reflects the values of the community of users, there is a risk of presenting a skewed view of the value of any particular topic. For example, users might assign pejorative tags to certain resources, in addition, social bookmarking means storing data in yet another location that you have to maintain and update.”

Other cautions:

Inappropriate websites could be posted

Not all information may be reliable or true

There are no standards for tagging – teachers could provide a list of acceptable tags for a project

As can be seen from chart above – students must be given guidelines as to what to search for

Need to be registered to be able to mark bookmarks

Teachers would need to review websites that students could access

Management Considerations:

Blocked by BCPS

Registration required to mark bookmarks but not to search

Need to agree to Terms of Service

For general questions there is a FAQs and help pages. If answer is not found there, you need to email your question. No phone number is given.